Backes, B's bounce Coyotes

Thursday

Dec 7, 2017 at 11:07 PMDec 7, 2017 at 11:07 PM

By Mike LoftusThe Patriot Ledger

BOSTON — David Backes still isn’t even supposed to be playing. When the Bruins forward underwent surgery on Nov. 2 to remove a portion of his colon and relieve him of persistent diverticulitis, the prognosis was for him to miss eight weeks.

Remarkably, he returned to the lineup on Nov. 29. Even more significantly, he scored two goals on Thursday night at TD Garden to lead a 4-2 victory over the Coyotes in a game that would have been very bad to lose.

Backes scored the first goal of his injury-interrupted season with 6:06 left in the second period, deflecting a shot by linemate Riley Nash past Scott Wedgewood to break a 1-1 tie. In the final minute of the second, Backes stole a pass from Coyotes defenseman Alex Goligoski, cruised in on Wedgewood, and beat hit to the far side with a low wrist shot.

“Contributing offensively is a good feeling,” said Backes, a six-time 20-goal scorer with the Blues who only reached 17 as a first-year Bruin last season. “That’s not lost on me.

“But I have always been one who has trusted in the process -- trusted in playing hard, playing the right way, and knowing results come from that.”

Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy had to place the same sort of trust in Thursday’s lineup, which went to sleep after the top line of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak scored just 15 seconds into the game.

“I think we thought it was going to be easy there for a while, and we paid a price,” said the coach, whose team bounced back from Monday’s 5-3 loss at Nashville by extending their winning streak over the last-in-the-Western Conference Coyotes to 12 games.

“I thought tonight was a night we should try to work through it, get the lines to work through it … and we eventually did.”

The line of Backes, Nash (two assists) and rookie left wing (goal) led the way, igniting what proved to be a five-goal outburst. David Krejci (5-on-3 power play), Heinen and rookie winger Anders Bjork scored third-period goals to support Tuukka Rask (19 saves), who earned his third straight victory after losing four in a row.

Forced less and less to patch lineups together as players return from injuries, Cassidy was able to put rookie winger Jake DeBrusk (upper body injury) back into action against the Coyotes after a three-game absence, teaming him with veteran center Krejci and fellow rookie Bjork.

That left little temptation to break up the top unit of Marchand, Bergeron and Pastrnak, which occupies the top three slots on the scoring list and and distanced itself from the pack on the first shift of the night.

Marchand made it 1-0 at the 15-second mark, stretching his points streak to four games with his 10th goal of the year. Pastrnak traded passes with Bergeron between the right side and the goal line, then whipped the puck cross-ice to Marchand, who beat Wedgewood to the short side with a wrist shot. Pastrnak’s assist gave him a seven-game points streak, while Bergeron scored for the third game in a row.

Scoring chances were scarce after that, though, and the B’s rarely threatened to build their lead over the rest of a penalty-free period.

They gave it up, though, on Brandon Carlo’s giveaway late in the first. Carlo handed a breakout pass to Coyotes forward Christian Dvorak, who drove to the net from the left circle and put a backhander home off the far post before Torey Krug, Carlo’s partner, could cut him off.

Aside from a shot off the post early in the second, however, the Coyotes didn’t do much to sustain momentum, and the B’s finally started to wake up about halfway through the period. An excellent shift by the Heinen-Nash-Backes line with about nine minutes to go didn’t result in a shot at Wedgewood, but created energy the B’s used to re-take, and then extend the lead.